Middle school girl making football history

Adrianna Grubbs, 13, is the featured back for the Cherokee (TX) middle school Indians. She's scored 8 TDs over 5 games this season.

Video: RBragg@express-news.net / mysa.com

CHEROKEE — The best football news in a long time comes in a very small package.

The odds are good that most of you need it. The Texans, Cowboys, Longhorns, Roadrunners, Cardinals, and Bobcats aren’t doing well. The Red Raiders are meh. Your alma mater might make the UIL playoffs but probably won’t do well.f

There is a football feel-good story, and it can be found 110 miles north of San Antonio in the little Edwards Plateau town of Cherokee.

There, in a San Saba County town so isolated that a wild rabbit got loose on the field during the most recent game, a 5-foot, 90-pound superstar has emerged on the roster of the middle school’s six-man team.

This eighth-grade running back, who’s only been playing in pads for two months, has scored eight touchdowns in five games this year, most of them on long runs from midfield and beyond. In the Indians’ most recent game, the lightning-quick rookie scored untouched on runs of 45 and 40 yards, crossing defensive backs over like a point guard. Another long run was stopped inside the 5.

Cherokee Middle School running back Adrianna Grubbs, who’s only been playing in pads for two months, has scored eight touchdowns in five games this year, most of them on long runs from midfield and beyond.

Photo: Roy Bragg /San Antonio Express-News

No doubt about it. She’s fast.

Yes. She.

Adrianna Grubb looks small enough to need help holding a selfie stick. Give her the football and a few seconds to turn up field, however, and she becomes a blur. In all honesty — and I mean this in the best way possible — she resembles a smaller version of Johnny Manziel during his Heisman season.

She’s that good.

“When I get the ball, “ she told me after Cherokee’s 45-20 win over Brooksmithe on Thursday, “I just start running, and I keep going.”

“She does really well,” said Coach Wayne Stigler. “She can hold her own out there.”

In late September, in the Indians’ first game against Stephenville Faith, Grubb became the first girl in school history to score a touchdown.

And though it’s impossible to check the records of tens of thousands of middle school and high school games nationwide for the last century, it’s likely 13-year-old Grubb could be one of the few girls to have ever scored multiple touchdowns in a scholastic, all-boys football league.

A 17-year-old girl who kicks for a Virginia team threw a TD pass on a fake punt in September. Earlier this month, a Wisconsin girl ran for a short touchdown.

Those girls, however, represent anomalies. Grubb is the featured back on her team.

Grubb has grown up on ranches in Texas and New Mexico, her step-dad said, far from the Disney Channel and Facebook.